YEAR
Fall 2018
SKILLS
Research
Design Thinking
Branding
Photography
Craft
Florida Swing Dancing Club
Florida Swing Dancing Club is a promotional campaign meant to advertise to potential new members in the Gainesville community as well as foster loyalty among club members. I observed Florida Swing Dancing Club meetings, attended and photographed a formal dance, and interviewed club members as well as the club president for my research. Through my research I determined a problem the club was having and used design thinking practices to come up with these promotional materials as the solution.
This project focuses heavily on design thinking and the process of researching, observing, and conducting interviews with members of Florida Swing Dancing Club. I used my research, observation, and interviews to conclude a problem that the club was facing and how I could fix it using a creative design solution.
THE PROBLEM
Florida Swing Dance Club's primary problem is permanent long term membership. This leads to another problem they face which is a lack of dance teachers and DJ’s. Their current membership base is rooted mainly in UF students. UF students will join the club, become hooked after a couple meetings, become “veterans” and become skilled at Swing. But every year they lose many of these “veteran” members because they graduate and move away from Gainesville.
Florida Swing Dance Club needs to start appealing to the greater Gainesville community for members, specifically middle aged men and women. They need these new members to be long time members who would be willing to give back to the club, teach, and DJ.
Without membership from the greater Gainesville community, they will continue to face the same problem year after year: losing the most vital and essential veteran members and teachers of their club due to those members graduating and moving away.
THE SOLUTION
My design solution is a series of promotional materials to help spread the word about Gainesville Swing Dancing Club and get people excited about membership.
My design solution employs minimal body copy that is mature, yet vibrant to appeal to older men and women. The design will also be bold and sophisticated, while still being dynamic and exciting to draw people’s attention. The style of the design will touch back to vintage aesthetics and post-modern and Bauhaus design. This aesthetic touches back to the 40’s-50’s in Europe, which is when Swing Dancing was becoming prominent there, and will also draw in an older audience with it’s dated, vintage style.
I created a poster ad to be hung downtown around the Hippodrome, at Gainesville Health and Fitness Center, and at Celebration Pointe. The Hippodrome and Bo Diddly Plaza area draws an older crowd that is interested in the arts, theatre, and dance. Gainesville Health and Fitness Center draws a middle-aged crowd that is interested in physical health and exercise. Celebration Pointe draws a crowd of middle-aged people with free time.
I chose to do a newspaper and facebook ad because these are two platforms that are highly used by middle aged men and women. Facebook is the most popular social media cite among this demographic by a large margin, and almost every adult I know reads the daily newspaper.
To foster loyalty, I created a Welcome Package for new members. The welcome package would be handed out at New Member Dance Socials. The welcome package includes a club box that holds all of the other materials, a button down Florida Swing Dancing Club shirt, a drawstring bag, and a collector’s poster. The shirt is nice quality material and a more classic, elevated style. The bag is meant to serve as a shoe bag for members’ dance shoes. They can carry their shoes in the bag to and from meetings and dances, while repping Florida Swing Dancing Club everywhere they carry their shoes. The poster serves as a sign of pride in the club and something members can show in their own homes.
